The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

Sharon Bialek

Bu Julie Berebitsky

While Herman Cain might be looking for any shelter to hide from the media maelstrom surrounding alleged sexual harassment claims, the public has been anything but silent.

Much of the talk has referenced Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas or Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Butthe most telling connection to the past can be found in the margins of this reporting, in readers’ comments or writers’ toss away lines. Those sources provide evidence that our understanding of women and of sex in the workplace bears a startling similarity to what existed in the 19th century.

On some deep and abiding level we still don’t trust women when it comes to matters of sex, and we still don’t accept sexual harassment as serious unless it is an exacting quid pro quo.

Commenting on an article in the New York Times, one reader deemed as “frivolous” anything short of physical violence and recommended a “forceful slap” as the way to end unwanted attentions. Another argued for the power of numbers: two women suggested a problem, but if it had just been one, well, that’s just “he said, she said.” Readers cast women as “liars” and “opportunists” and sexual harassment as a legal “shake down,” while David Brooks pondered over whether a “moral taint” attached to women who took a deal that required them to remain silent.

Conservatives were not the only ones to hold these views. Wendy Kaminer, writing for the Atlantic, asked if she “would lose all credibility as a feminist” if she responded to reports of Cain’s sexually suggestive remarks and gestures to female subordinates with a “so what?” Compared to Cain’s view on abortion, tax policy, and the work-ethic of the poor, “upsetting” or “offending” your employees with sexually suggestive remarks or movements was pretty harmless stuff.

Americans didn’t believe women or take unwanted and aggressive behaviors seriously a century ago either. Afterall, the women who described men’s insulting and aggressive behavior were working in unchaperoned spaces outside the home for wages. Wasn’t that defacto proof that they were most likely the immoral ones?

Historically, many Americans have seen working women as enticers who take advantage of men’s alleged sexual vulnerability to make their lives easier. For a great many Americans, women’s sexual power over men was a rough equivalent to men’s authority over their female employees. Exploitation, they believed, could cut both ways.

Do some women lie? Yes. Do some women use their attractiveness for workplace gain? Sure. But do the majority of women fall into one or both of these categories?

Hundreds of examples from the last century demonstrate otherwise. Archival records, memoirs, and journalistic accounts are thick with evidence of women denied promotion, women fired, women attacked, women's work lives made a living hell. The pressure is always on the woman to overlook repeated badgering; in numerous cases, attempts to insulate oneself from harassment result in an escalation of the harasser's anger.

After spending the last decade researching what we might think of as the “pre-history” of sexual harassment, I believe we very much still need sexual harassment laws—including those that prohibit a “hostile environment.” In my research, I came across a story from the early 1970s when sexual harassment was not yet illegal. A secretary’s co-worker kept pestering her for dates, despite her increasingly forceful refusals and a reprimand from their boss.